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Friends, such collars are still forged. The golden chains of monopoly 

 still lead captive those who had pledged themselves to serve the people. 

 Before election we own them, but somehow, afterwards, they always sell 

 us. And what are you going to do about that? If a man makes a solemn 

 promise to marry a woman, and breaks that promise, you make him 

 pay an enormous fine. If another obtains money under false pretenses, 

 you send him to your State's prison. Yet you suffer men who 

 obtain not only money, but honor and preeminence, under false pre- 

 tenses and false pledges and promises made to the whole community, to 

 go scot free. Enact laws by which a recreant representative shall be 

 as guilty, yea, ten-fold more guilty, than the vilest criminal. He is 

 guilty of the unpardonable offense of treason against the republic. Let 

 public opinion and the laws so brand him. Let the weight of his 

 iniquity burn him. Next, when you are all agreed that you want the 

 Government to own the railroads, you have got to get your National 

 Government to realize that it is simply an institution for carrying on 

 the people's business in a business-like way. At present Congress 

 seems to be regarded as a field where fledgling orators may essay flights 

 of speech and fly verbal kites. 



Take an instance. I'll venture to say that not one business man in 

 the whole nation who has a heavy stock of goods for which there is little 

 or no demand, would buy more on a falling market, or would debate the 

 propriety of so doing for five minutes. Yet our Congress for three 

 months worried that threadbare proposition in debating what is called 

 the silver question, and could not find a day for the Nicaragua Canal. 

 Again, suppose the directors of some company met to transact busi- 

 ness, and one came loaded with a pile of books and newspapers, and 

 began to talk and read, and talk and read the whole day, on purpose to 

 waste the time and delay the business the others wanted to attend to. 

 What would they do about it? Would they not unanimously fire him 

 out as a lunatic? Yet this is the course daily followed by members in 

 Congress, and they call it " guarding the rights of the minority." 

 "Stealing the rights of the majority" would be a more appropriate 

 description of such unspeakable folly. If the people want to be free from 

 monopolies they must adopt modern methods of conducting the nation's 

 business, and give up antiquated methods, whose only commendation is 

 their age. Does a merchant or a banker stick to old-fashioned, cum- 

 brous, inefficient business methods simply because his great grandfather 

 used those methods? If he did every one would call him an unpro- 

 gressive old fool, or a silurian, or a fossil. And they'd be right. Then 

 why permit silurian methods in our national business? 



But, friends, if we want to overcome monoply, and hand down to our 

 children unimpaired the liberty our forefathers won for us, we must 

 emulate the virtues of those forefathers. We must learn that faction 

 and party and all things that tend to divide mankind are mischievous. 

 We must learn to fight the devil with fire. The railroad wields its 

 enormous power because it "pools its issues." We must pool our 

 issues. " Union" must be our watchword. " United we stand, divided 

 we fall ! " And if in this fight against the railroads we fall, we shall 

 be ten-fold more the slaves of monopoly than ever our fathers were of 

 King George. Even now we speak with bated breath lest they should 

 cinch us tighter. Even now King George's tea tax is not a circumstance 



